Nepalis began voting in the final round of municipal elections on Monday (18/09), an important step before a general election in November that will complete a near decade-long democratic transition after the abolition of Nepal's monarchy. (Reuters Photo/Navesh Chitrakar)

London. A greener energy mix helped keep energy-related carbon dioxide emissions flat in 2016 yet more needs to be done to avert a harmful rise in global temperatures, data from the International Energy Agency, or IEA, showed on Friday (17/03).

Energy sector emissions of 32.1 gigatonnes were unchanged from 2015 and 2014 even though the global economy grew by 3.1 percent, the IEA estimated.

"These three years of flat emissions in a growing global economy signal an emerging trend and that is certainly a cause for optimism, even if it is too soon to say that global emissions have definitely peaked," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement.

Carbon dioxide emissions fell in the United States and China, the world's two largest energy users and emitters, and were stable in Europe.

This helped to offset increases in CO2 emissions in the rest of the world, the IEA said.

US emissions fell by 3 percent to their lowest level since 1992 helped by higher use of shale gas and renewable energy displacing coal.

For the first time, the United States produced more electricity from natural gas than from coal last year.